Do chickens wind down egg production during the winter month

mamashango184 · « **on:** January 25, 2009, 08:38 »

I posted on here yesterday regarding my new hens and where to get some local feed, and you all aswered my my questions really well, so here i am back again..... ok.... I got my five chickens yesterday they are roughly 18mnth old battery hens. The man i got them from said you would be lucky to get an egg a week from the hens at this time of year. Is this true? Is is because of the lack of hours of daylight? Any info would be great, oh and one of the girls has runny poo. What can that be? Im thinking its just the upheaval over the past 24 hrs. They all seem fine and eating and sleeping well, (first night was a breeze in bed for 6pm!and up just after 8am!)

richyrich7 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2009, 08:44 »

Yes he's right daylight hours affects the birds laying. If they have just come from the battery farm their internal clock may be well out they are kept in artificial lighting for many hours of the day to keep egg production high.

As for the runny poo I'd give them a day or so to see if it settles, if not post a pic on here if you can and or resident poo doctors will have a look

mamashango184 · « **Reply #2 on:** January 25, 2009, 10:00 »

Just got my first egg from the ladies, very happy!! Is a monster too! Much bigger than my large free range egg out of morrisons.

poultrygeist · « **Reply #3 on:** January 25, 2009, 10:06 »

:cheers:

And a considerably smaller carbon footprint too!

Congrats to whichever luck lady laid it.

Rob

raeburg · « **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2009, 12:00 »

My ex-bats took the summer off whilst they moulted, refeathered and generally got the hang of being real chickens. I'm now getting an average of 5 eggs per day from 8 girls. My mum is getting 5 from 10 girls that were bought as point of lay last summer.

lisa123 · « **Reply #5 on:** January 25, 2009, 21:13 »

hi there im new to all this only had my chickens for 4mnths. my one hen has laid every day since the day after i had her even through winter lucky enough, my other hen lays normally everyother day. so even though it is so cold my one chuck is still laying.

Spadefighter · « **Reply #6 on:** January 25, 2009, 23:21 »

My experience of ex batts has been that they laid for the first few days but the eggs were of inconsistent quality. We then had a week or two of nothing before they started consistently laying.

nnbreeder · « **Reply #7 on:** January 26, 2009, 04:43 »

Sometimes moving them or anything out of the ordinary will throw them "off the lay" for a short time. Generally speaking though they need 14 hrs of light to stimulate laying especially for the older heritage type of breeds. Those bred for egg production are less prone to need the extra daylight.

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Do chickens wind down egg production during the winter month

mamashango184

mamashango184

poultrygeist